Introduction of graduate schools in Estonia — impact to the graduate education in ICT

In Estonia the graduate education system (by graduate we mean PhD-level education that follows bachelor and master degrees) has been undergoing major modifications. The research-based model has been replaced by more study-oriented model. The number of graduate students is growing rapidly. The society starts to have higher appreciation of the PhD degree. Consequently, the quality of the graduate studies has to be increased as well. In this paper we will focus on one of the measures to increase quality of graduate education, namely graduate schools. We will describe Estonian Graduate School in Information and Communication Technologies (IKTDK), analyze the impact of this school to our graduate education, explain the problems and shortcomings.